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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130352">Living In the Walls</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN'>NKMLN</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dice Will Roll (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, I cannot overstate how much I love this man, Pathfinder - Freeform, Possession, dont even fuck with me on this one people can be familiars and it fucks, extinction curse, familiar!volio au, long furby</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:22:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130352</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Familiars don't get a hand in the pact that creates them. (AKA what not to do when you get adopted by an eldritch noodle furby)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Volio &amp; Oddbody</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Living In the Walls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The relationship between a witch and their familiar runs dark, deep. Raised from mud, filled with holy light, made a vessel of knowledge- but you must understand.</p><p>A familiar is made from the pact. It does not exist as a familiar until the deal is struck. Until then, it is innocent, ignorant, at peace, left to the ravages of nature.</p><p>A familiar has no say in the matter of its creation.</p><p>-</p><p>He is young. No longer a child, still understanding the extent of himself. Volio Via has untamed depths, and he is finding them, slowly, surely, understanding their edges and how they form to make him whole.</p><p>He has time. He will have so much time.</p><p>Volio feeds the stage rats small pieces of fruit and popcorn when he can find them, although Madame Dusklight says he’s making them soft. He’s seen her after hours, when she thought no one was looking, pouncing after them from the bleachers. Gods, that sight alone had given him a weeks worth of energy, driven purely on their great ringleader hissing at a mouse.</p><p>He reasons that if he doesn’t keep the population from starving, Dusklight might come after him. That’s reason enough to keep visiting.</p><p>He coos at them as they take tiny nibbles of banana from his open palm. The little brown one he’d been so worried about after they had had an accident with a vendor is there, too, and it brings him no small amount of relief to see them safe. He’ll tell Eriato and Royari, later- the nightly rat report is a serious matter.</p><p>There’s a squeak. It’s louder than normal, and he cocks his head, searching for the newcomer. “Do you vant food? It’s okay, she’s not here.”</p><p>A louder squeak. A warm, solid weight drapes itself over his shoulders. Volio goes still as a long, furry thing slithers around his shoulders and munches up the rest of the banana.</p><p>That is. Probably not a rat.</p><p>-</p><p>Royari calls it an affront against the natural order of the world. Eriato takes one look and promptly decides she’d rather have tea with her aunts than stay in its presence.</p><p>Volio, personally, finds it charming.</p><p>“Your shoes are an affront to the natural order,” he points out later that week. “You are supposed to be five and a half feet. I’m not trying to get rid of your shoes.”</p><p>“I paid for these,” Royari tells him, nonetheless glancing at their shoes. “Did you pay for that snake-weasel abomination? And, follow-up, did you use your fucking soul as currency?”</p><p>“I found it,” he says solemnly. Oddbody trills, and he scratches it’s chin. “It chose me. Like how you chose your shoes.”</p><p>They look at Oddbody despairingly. Oddbody looks back and clicks its beak. “Dusklight’s not gonna be happy.”</p><p>He sighs. “I know.”</p><p>-</p><p>Dusklight sets into him after rehearsal two nights later. She leaves bruises around his wrist. He does not fight back.</p><p>She tells him to get rid of it. He says nothing.</p><p>-</p><p>Oddbody curls around his arm at the edge of the forest. He’s getting a little teary-eyed. He can’t explain this to them. He doesn’t want to. “You can’t stay here,” he tells them quietly. “I’m sorry, but it’s not safe. She’ll hurt you.”</p><p>It coos. He wipes his eyes. “You have to go.”</p><p>Oddbody goes quiet, looking him over inscrutably before uncurling from his wrist and floating a few feet into the forest. It watches his face. Volio is going to cry. It knows this. They both do. The tether is already formed.</p><p>It floats towards him, then away. Back.</p><p>Volio sniffles, but he takes this small act of rebellion. He follows it.</p><p>-</p><p>The sky turns dark. The forest goes quiet. Oddbody moves forward with singular intent. Volio follows.</p><p>It stops in front of a river, curling into a heap on the ground and slithering in and out of a series of burrows it seems to have dug on its own. Volio sits beside it and watches the water. “Is zis your home?”</p><p>A quiet coo. “It’s very nice.”</p><p>Silence.</p><p>They stay like that for a long time.</p><p>As the moon rises to reflect in the tumbling water, Oddbody pulls itself out of the ground and begins to coo again. Its voice rises and falls in eerie phrases, and Volio listens silently. He doesn’t know what this is, just that it’s not something for him to interrupt. This is not a space for his paltry tongue, not under this sunflower moon, the endless sky, this churning water, this- this-</p><p>Oddbody stares down at him. The sky settles around them like a rope. He cannot breathe. His eyes fill with tears, though from fear or joy or something else entirely he could not say. He is so small here. He doesn’t want to be small.</p><p>Oddbody drifts down to stare him in the eyes. It bumps their foreheads together. A tear tracks down his cheek</p><p>
  <i>You will never be alone again.</i>
</p><p>He blacks out before he can scream.</p><p>-</p><p>He wakes up in his caravan the next day. His throat burns. His eyes are dry. His mouth tastes of blood. Oddbody is curled contentedly on his chest.</p><p>He is an hour late for rehearsal.</p><p>He races out, barely ready to perform, Oddbody chasing after him. He cannot process anything right now. He’s in enough trouble as it is. Shit, shit. Shit, Dusklight’s going to kill him-</p><p>He can hear Eriato as he gets closer. “He’s sick! He didn’t oversleep, we left him in bed, he was burning up, I swear-”</p><p>It registers in his mind that these are not ideal conditions in which to enter the tent, but he’s already halfway through the flap, and he knows everyone’s already looking, and Oddbody is already curled around his shoulders, so it’s not like he really could have prevented anything. Eriato goes silent when she sees him, her eyes wide. They’ve both been caught. Shit. He didn’t mean to drag her up in this, but his mind is going a mile a minute and he can’t think. He’s sorry. He’s sorry.</p><p>“Volio,” Dusklight purrs, turning to face him. “Up and about so soon? And here I thought we were losing you to- I thought I told you to get rid of that thing.”</p><p>Her voice is flat. He takes a deep breath. If he stiffens up, it will hurt more.</p><p>She’s already reaching for him, claws exposed, and he doesn’t close his eyes this time, which is the only way he sees her hand pass through his throat like there’s nothing there. Oddbody screeches, high, reedy, and he does not breathe. He is nothing. He is nothing. Oh, gods, he understands nothing. He understands so much he didn’t ask for- spells, contracts, laws, lines, the way a life can be twisted and inverted and revealed to never exist in the slightest actions.</p><p>She doesn’t connect. She stumbles through him. He looks on. He wants to laugh. He wants to scream. He cannot do either.</p><p>“Oddbody stays,” he says, Eriato’s terrified eyes burning through him, Royari squeezing her hand so tightly her knuckles are white. He is numb. There is no pain, not now.</p><p>It will come back. He has always had time for pain.</p><p>He has so much time.</p>
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